


Holding Back the Storm

by Smidgenofthesea



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Confessions, I don't know where to take this but I had to get it out, Incomplete, M/M, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10740129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smidgenofthesea/pseuds/Smidgenofthesea
Summary: Dean prays too loud.Cas responds.Dean tries to shut the conversation down, but this time it doesn't work.Just a short angst-filled incomplete thing that I haven't figured out how to end yet.





	Holding Back the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing SPN fic. It's obviously unfinished, but I'm hoping putting it up here will give me a kick in the pants. Any comments would be welcome!

Dean licks his lips nervously. Cas had just appeared next to him on the bench seat of the Impala.  
“Jesus, Cas. A little warning?”  
“You were praying to me.” No pretense, no subtext. No way to know how Cas felt about it.  
“You pray so loudly, sometimes I think I’ll lose myself in it.” Silence. “If I haven’t already.”  
Dean grips the steering wheel tighter, trying to center himself in the texture of the faux leather. “I wasn’t praying, Cas. I don’t-I never pray. Not anymore.”  
Cas cocks his head and turned his lighthouse-beacon gaze to Dean’s face. Dean swears he can feel Cas’s eyes moving over his features, somehow feather-light and heavy at the same time.  
“Dean. I don’t know what you think ‘praying’ is” Cas’s fingers made angry air quotes “but every time you think about me and wonder where I am and if I’m safe, or long for me to come back and sit beside you, when you’re angry that I’ve left, afraid that I’m gone for good this time,”  
Cas speaks faster, words tumbling out, cataloging each and every moment Dean had been calling out for him without knowing it. Almost angrily he continues his speech. “When you’re lonely and Sam just isn’t enough anymore, when you feel guilty that he’s not enough but still wish I were there, you’re always calling out to me. And it’s so loud Dean, you’re so loud.” Cas pauses and then whispers “Sometimes it’s all I hear.”  
Dean’s first instinct is to meet anger with anger. He knows how to blow conversations out of the water to keep them from getting dangerous. But the slump of Cas’s shoulders and the darkness outside Baby’s windshield combine to diffuse him. The car is a confessional booth.  
“I’m sorry. I. I can’t help it. You know, I just” Dean scrubs a hand over his face “You know, Cas. You hafta know.” Dean’s pleading now, hoping that Cas won’t make him say it. Hoping that just knowing will be enough, that somehow all the things he needs to communicate will come across without any words actually being said.  
“I don’t _have_ to do anything, Dean. I thought that was the point of free will.” He sighs and squints into the dark middle distance. “I thought I was getting better at humanity. Apparently not. I still do not understand your prayers. Or how they make me feel.”  
Dean swallows and risks a glance at his companion. Cas’s brow is furrowed as though he might badger his emotions into behaving. The expression is endearing, but Dean knows how quickly the consternation can turn to righteous anger. It fills him with peace, the knowledge that he is not the most dangerous person in the car.  
“How” Dean clears his throat “Cas, how do they make you feel?” Dean feels like he’s standing on a cliff over a violent ocean. The little voice that encourages driving off cliffs, reminds how easy it would be for the knife to slip, or the gun to go off, that voice is whispering how simple it would be to jump.  
Cas doesn’t immediately reply. The Impala continues to chew up miles, the yellow line hypnotizing Dean into a calm he thinks he probably shouldn’t be feeling, considering the circumstances. They sit in silence for a while, until the night mist coalesces into a soft rain. Dean turns on the wipers.  
Cas’s gravel-and-whisky voice jolts him out of highway hypnosis.  
“Angels are not, by nature, self-destructive. The human capacity for self-implosion is fascinating but completely foreign to us. Angels, when confronted with fire, fight through it, or extinguish it. Only humans would find a way to play with it. Your prayers...They’re consuming. I can feel myself being pulled under. As an angel, I should fight the sensation. I should _want_ to fight it. Instead, I find myself wanting to dive into it. Just...let it flood me. I don’t understand.”  
Dean’s still standing on that cliff, teetering between solid safety and the uninhibited joy of free-fall. It’s so close, all he has to do is lean forward and he’ll be gone. But it’s too much. It’s not that he doesn’t think he deserves happiness. It’s not Hell, or that Cas is an angel, or even that he’s a guy. Dean can work his way around all of those objections. He has, nightly, while trying to convince himself to call the angel and lay everything out for him. Some nights he even allows himself to imagine Cas reciprocating. And they all lived happily ever after. But he never follows through. Every night he gently-because in secret he is a gentle, gentle man-puts those thoughts away and tucks them back in the box with his mom, Ben and Lisa, Jo and Ellen.  
“Cas, man” he hates himself before the words leave his mouth “you don’t want this.” The cliff recedes. “Trust me. Humans? We’re messy. Yeah, we play with fire, but mostly we get burned. It’s not worth it. What you’re feeling-” his voice breaks, he stumbles and rushes on “-it’s not real. There’s just some static in your angel radio, you’re getting shitty backwash from me. I’ll stop-” _somehow_ he thinks, _I’ll stop myself from reaching out for you_ “-and you’ll feel better and we’ll all laugh about this.”  
_I will never laugh about this, because I’m never going to let myself think about it ever again._  
The look Cas gives him cuts deeper than the last time he was stabbed. “I am not a child, Dean. If you insist on acting like one, please exclude me from your act. There’s nothing wrong with my radio. If you want to ignore me, at least have the honesty to say so.” And with a whisper of feathers, he’s gone.  
Fuck Dean thinks. He slams the steering wheel with his palm, cranks the wheel and pulls off to the shoulder. Before he’s thought it through, he’s out of the car and standing in the grass alongside the empty road.  
“CAS!” Dean bellows. “Get your feathery ass back here! You wanna do this?! You REALLY wanna do this?! COME ON, LET'S DO THIS.”  
He finds a rock, picks it up and hurls it into the darkness. The soft noise behind him is the only warning that he’s not alone. Dean turns around and Cas is staring at him, stormclouds rising in his eyes. He chokes, the tirade dying in his throat. Cas is close, definitely in his personal space. Dean finds whatever he was about to say less important than memorizing Cas’s expression. It might, after all, be the last time he sees it. And Dean’s willing to accept that outcome. It seems safer than the alternative. Because of course he’s in love with Cas. It’s as obvious as the ocean. The tides rise and fall, and he loves Cas. Only the feelings he carries aren’t a tide that ebbs and flows, they’re an incoming tsunami. He’s standing on the beach, and the ocean has receded miles out, and he knows when it rushes back in it’s going to destroy him and everything nearby. Sometimes his chest aches from the restraint, from holding it back. It’s terrifying. Dean watched his father turn love into obsession and revenge. He tries not to imagine what he would do if he let Cas in and then lost him. What he would be willing to destroy to get him back. If he sold his soul for Sammy, what would he do for this man-this being-who brings that tsunami to a crest?


End file.
